Portable mobile communications devices such as mobile phones are becoming more sophisticated and include many new features and capabilities. One such capability that is not yet in widespread use is the inclusion of a tactile interface for a touchscreen display.
Touchscreen displays are well known and provide the ability to receive input by directly ‘touching’ the display means with a finger or other item such as a pen stylus. One of the biggest drawbacks to touchscreen displays is the lack of tactile sensation when actuating a key or button represented on the display. Recent technological advancements can now provide tactile feedback for a touchscreen display such that the user actually feels the sensation of pressing a mechanical key or button when they are actually making contact with a flat touchscreen display. The tactile feedback provides a greater user experience as well as a truer sense that the input was indeed received by the device.
Portable mobile communications devices utilize processing hardware and software that can operate multiple applications in addition to making and receiving cellular telephone calls. Many portable mobile communications devices provide camera devices and applications, digital music players, web browsers, office type applications including e-mail, and gaming applications. Each of these applications utilizes a separate and distinct graphical user interface (GUI) that is designed to be naturally intuitive to the user.
It becomes a significant design challenge to provide multiple GUIs based on a single display and keypad configuration that is inherent to a portable mobile communications device. Tactile feedback touchscreen display means driven by software controlled operating modes can quickly reconfigure a portable mobile communications device display to represent multiple different modes or applications such as those presented above. This opens the door to eliminating most mechanical keys on a portable mobile communications device in favor of configurable tactile feedback touchscreen displays. This also allows for a larger surface area for the display means since most of the area previously reserved for mechanical keys can be eliminated.
Most portable mobile communications devices are rectangular in shape meaning their displays are also rectangular in shape. However, not all of the multiple modes/applications listed above will utilize the display in the same orientation. Some applications work better when presented in a portrait orientation (phone, music player) while others are more intuitive in a landscape orientation (game playing, browser) while some may work equally well in either orientation (camera) depending on a personal preference.
In addition, a mechanically vibrated touchscreen display can be configured to cover the back and even the sides of a portable mobile communications device. This would allow for user interface ‘buttons’ to be configured in areas that are not just the front face of the portable mobile communications device.
Integrating motion/orientation sensing technology with tactile feedback touchscreen displays allows the portable mobile communications device to automatically reconfigure itself for a different mode of operation without the user having to delve into the intricacies of the user interface to manipulate the functions.